Cooking 101: How to Hard Boil Eggs

The following post is from Shaina of Food for My Family and Olmanson Photography:

Hard boiled eggs are like candy around these parts. My kids will eat them plain or with a sprinkling of salt and pepper for any meal of the day. I’m not complaining, as they’re an easy meal to make ahead and that much easier to pack in a lunch box. Plus, they’re a good source of protein, riboflavin and vitamin B12.

Peeling hard boiled eggs, however, can be a pain if the membrane between the shell and egg doesn’t stick to the shell and ends up sticking to the egg. There are ways to help prevent this, though, and we have just taken to making our eggs this way so that even my 2-year-old can peel his own egg. The extra 60 or so seconds he spends doing that is an extra 60 seconds I have to try to get caught up with cleaning or work. Win!

Our eggs peel beautifully each and every time, so when Mandi let on that the baking soda egg blowing experiment was a failure, I felt the need to share.

This method is courtesy of Julia Child and was actually found by my husband, Ole, one day when we were making hard boiled eggs for potato salad.

Perfectly Easy-to-Peel Hard Boiled Eggs

1. Start by placing your eggs in the bottom of a large pot. You want the pot to be large enough that the eggs can fit in a single layer. Add water until it’s 1 inch above the top of the eggs.

2. Turn on the heat and bring the water to a boil. (If you want, you can add a half teaspoon of salt here like Katie suggests.)

3. When the water boils, cover the pot and turn the burner off. Let the eggs sit in the covered pot for 17 minutes. Get a bowl filled with ice water and set it off to the side.

4. After 17 minutes, transfer the eggs into the ice water using a slotted spoon.

5. Now, bring the water back up to a boil again and place the cooled eggs into the boiling water for just 10-20 seconds more. Cooling the egg causes the egg itself to shrink away from the shell and membrane, and when we give the outer shell that extra blast of heat, it causes it to expand slightly, pulling it as far away from the egg as possible. The eggs then go back in the ice water to let them cool completely.

6. Peel the egg.

The result is a soft egg white and a perfectly set, yellow yolk dancing right in the center of your egg that slips out from under the shell with ease. Easy for the kids to peel, but also easy when you have to make them in large amounts for your favorite recipes as well.

Recipes with Hard Boiled Eggs:

Chicken Empanadas | Food for My Family
Spicy Hummus and Veggie Wrap | Good Cheap Eats
Spinach Salad | The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Chili-Lime Deviled Eggs | Babble’s Family Kitchen
Tarragon Egg Salad | Simply Recipes
Baked Potato Salad | Food for My Family

What are your favorite recipes that include hard boiled eggs?

Shaina Olmanson is the home cook and photographer behind Food for My Family and Olmanson Photography, a daily contributor to Babble.com’s Family Kitchen Blog and the editor of the food channel for Lifetime Moms. Shaina can usually be found in one of three places: cooking, at the computer or behind the camera.